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Work smarter, then work harder

Work smarter, then work harder. It takes both to become the best at your profession.

Take the 80/20 rule first. 80 percent of your results come from 20 percent of your effort. This is where the “work smarter” portion comes into play. If you ignore the 20 percent of the work that is getting the most results, you’ll be working tirelessly and seeing almost nothing in return. So make sure you are smart about where you are focusing your attention.

From there, you have to work harder if you want to achieve excellence. The first 80 percent of the results should come relatively easy just by doing the right things. But if you truly want to be in the top 1 percent, you’re going to have to work really hard in addition to working smart.

Make sure you are working in this order though (smarter then harder). You don’t want to work really hard and feel like you’re going to burn out because you’ve wasted all of your time and money…Once you get 80 percent of the results, you will have stabilized your income enough so you can afford to take on greater challenges.

The key to greatness

To be great, you have to be consistent. You have to be disciplined. You may have natural talent/ability, but without nurturing it and growing it through consistent effort, you will never achieve true greatness.

Do you think LeBron James or Michael Jordan were born with gifts that you and I don’t have? Yes. That’s how the world works. Everyone is different. But they also worked tirelessly for years on end, spent millions of dollars investing in their bodies to help strengthen them, honed their craft with hours in the gym, etc. They had natural ability, but so do a lot of other guys in the NBA. It was their consistent, focused effort over many years that helped them become the greatest of all time.

While it is easy to think of sports as the best analogy here, it applies to everything we do in life. Want to be better at your job? What actions are you taking daily to train to become the best? Do you role play scenarios with other team members? Do you take continuing education classes? Do you read about specific subjects to help you or watch “how to” videos?

You don’t improve the most by going to a weeklong seminar once per year and then not doing anything else until next year’s seminar. You improve the most by taking small, focused actions every single day, always building upon the previous day.

What actions are you willing to take to achieve greatness – not today, and not tomorrow, but five, ten, or twenty years from now? Are you able to look at the big picture and base your decisions on that instead of what feels good today? Do you have the discipline to repeat the monotonous actions (slightly/slowly improving over time)? If you want to be mediocre, that’s fine. You can live a good life coasting through it. But if you want to achieve greatness, you have to endure many unheroic days to reach some heroic decades in the future…

Finding your purpose to live a long, meaningful life.

It’s not that life is short; it isn’t. It’s that we waste so much time doing things that we don’t want to be doing.

How can you maximize your enjoyment (play) while also meeting your need to achieve personal goals, contributing to the well-being of others, and not feeling the stresses of modern life?

Take the time to fill out this diagram. As you can see, not everything will overlap. It may be very difficult to find your purpose, but if you do, your life will be like a dream come true.

The key to success

Knock down/remove as many barriers as possible to achieve success. But make sure you’re the one removing the obstacles and not just letting someone do the hard work for you.

The more barriers you have, the less likely you are to reach your goal. For example, say you want to lose 50 lbs. If you don’t have workout attire, you’re less likely to go…

If you live far away from the gym you chose to be a member…

If you don’t have a support system/someone to hold you accountable…

If you are surrounded by junk food (you have it in your house, you go down the aisle in the store with it, etc.)…

REMOVE BARRIERS.

Being present

Enjoy your time in the present. You can’t change the past and if you dwell too much on it, you can fill your head with regret (from negative memories) or longing (from nostalgic memories). But regardless of what you’re thinking about, if you spend too much time on it, you’re not making new memories. Be present so you can strengthen your current relationships and create new, meaningful memories.

Just as you can’t change the past, you also cannot control the future. There are so many variables outside of what you can influence. Focusing too much on outside factors or on things that might happen can cause you to feel a lot of anxiety.

Once again, the key is to return to the present. You can only control the thoughts you tell yourself and actions you take today. And no matter how smart we think we are, nobody knows what tomorrow will bring. Not only that, but we are not guaranteed to be here tomorrow. That’s why you have to balance your actions to maximize living your best life – setting up your future self to succeed, but also enjoying your life today.

Be present. Put things in perspective. It’s important to enjoy life today, to spend time with loved ones, to have regular conversations with friends, and to play a little each day. Life is good as long as you don’t let it overwhelm you.